Harry R. Lewis, PhD, Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science, Harvard University.
This course focuses on information as quantity, resource, and property. We study the application of quantitative methods to understanding how information technologies inform issues of public policy, regulation, and law. How are music, images, and telephone conversations represented digitally, and how are they moved reliably from place to place through wires, glass fibers, and the air? Who owns information, who owns software, what forms of regulation and law restrict the communication and use of information, and does it matter? How can personal privacy be protected at the same time that society benefits from communicated or shared information?
Free lecture videos
The recorded lectures are from the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences course Quantitative Reasoning 48, which was offered as an online course at the Extension School.
The Quicktime and MP3 formats are available for download, or you can play the Flash version directly. These lectures are organized by 12 themes, which can be viewed in any order. Note that some topics are repeated in different themes, as relevant.
Blog posts
Harry Lewis provides commentary and analysis on his blog, Blown to Bits. Blog posts are linked below with the videos.
What is information? (i.e., bits reductionism, “it’s all just bits”)
- Video
- What is a bit?
- Using bits
- Information representation
- Representation
- Arithmetic overflow
- Memory
- Compression (Morse Code)
- Compression (average length)
- Compression (entropy)
- Shannon and information theory
- Block codes and prefix codes
- Self-information
- First and second order entropy
- Low level bits
- Error correction
- Hamming codes
- Shannon channel coding
- Representing analog information digitally
- Fourier transform
- Digitizing sound
- Bits: representation
- Representing text with bits
- Representing documents: outdated software
- Uncovering hidden text in documents; open-source word-processing software
- Data representation and metaphors
- Metaphor failures: data sanitation and leakage
- Bytes: quantities defined
- The impact of software and hardware obsolescence
- How the Internet works
- Packet delivery: TCP/IP
- The World Wide Web: what is it?
The explosion (exponential growth, you can save/move/analyze)
- Video
- Moore’s law
- Exponential growth
- Opening a bike lock
- Moore’s Law II
- Storage and binary search
- Guest: Professor Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard Law School, author of The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It
- Bits explosion, continued
- Technology and data access
- Website privacy policies
- Data sources, data storage and privacy
- Privacy versus national security, business interests
- Phishing attacks
- Identity theft
- The impact of software and hardware obsolescence
- How the Internet works
- Packet Delivery: TCP/IP
- The World Wide Web: what is it?
- Social networks: anomalies and pathologies, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
The Internet and the Web
- Video
- IETF and Internet standards
- Structure of the Internet
- About the Doc Searles article
- How packets are transferred
- What are IP addresses
- ICANN
- Internet protocols
- HTTP and cookies
- Internet archive
- Guest: Professor Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard Law School, author of The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It
- Defamation
- The Communications Decency Act
- The Case of Ken Zeran
- How the Internet works
- Packet delivery: TCP/IP
- The World Wide Web: What is it?
- Why is it called the Internet?
- Comcast case and net neutrality
- Comcast and Bit Torrent protocol
- Comcast case: an introduction
- How the Internet works: ISPs and packet passing
- Anatomy of an Internet packet: TCP and UDP
- Network Neutrality: an introduction
- How do you regulate the Internet?
- How do you make rules for technologies yet unseen?
- How do you regulate the Internet when the technologies keep evolving?
- Net Neutrality: a historical context
- Dave Reed: Early Internet pioneer
- The Lori Drew case: the verdict, and further thoughts
- Cooperation on the Web
- Cooperation on the Web: Wikipedia part 2
- Collective Intelligence: tracking digital trails
Privacy
- Video
- Nothing goes away
- DVD Protection
- Unlikely events
- Is information really deleted?
- Guest Chris Soghoian
- Reasonable network management practices
- Redacted documents
- Privacy policies on the Web
- HTTP and cookies
- Guest Latanya Sweeney: secret sharing
- Tyler Moore talks about phishing scams
- Why the course is called Life, Liberty ...
- Technology and data access
- Website privacy policies
- Data sources, data storage and privacy
- Privacy versus national security, business interests
- Phishing attacks
- Identity theft
- Tracking and monitoring: RFID cards
- Surveillance and national security
- Tracking and monitoring: device
- Tracking and monitoring: privacy versus convenience
- Metaphor failures: Data sanitation and leakage
- Google trends
- Social networks: Anomalies and pathologies, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
- The Lori Drew case: the verdict, and further thoughts
- Collective intelligence: tracking digital trails
Surveillance
- Video
- Guest Chris Soghoian
- Tracking and monitoring: RFID cards
- Surveillance and national security
- Tracking and monitoring: device
- Introduction: history of encryption
- Encryption: history as a military technology; legislative attempts to control encryption keys
- How to decrypt a cipher, an example of a substitution cipher
- Cryptosystems
- Vigenere's cipher, frequency analysis
- Secure encryption: an introduction
- Public Key Cryptography: Diffie-Hellman key agreement and
- Public Key Cryptography and computing big powers
- Diffie-Hellman Key Agreement
- Additional thoughts re: cryptography
Search
- Video
- What a search engine does
- Internet Archive
- Building a search engine index
- Storage and binary search
- Google index and page rank algorithm
- Google: ads and page ranking
- Content filtering
- Google trends
- Searching the Web
Secrecy and encryption
- Video
- Encryption
- Frequency Analysis
- Why “security through obscurity” fails
- DES and AES
- Public key cryptography
- Modular arithmetic
- Diffie-Hellman continued
- Modular arithmetic in cryptography
- Verifying identity
- Introduction: history of encryption
- Encryption: history as a military technology; legislative attempts to control encryption keys
- How to decrypt a cipher, an example of a substitution cipher
- Cryptosystems
- Vigenere’s cipher, frequency analysis
- Secure encryption: an introduction
- Public key cryptography: Diffie-Hellman key agreement
- Public Key Cryptography and computing big powers
- Diffie-Hellman Key Agreement
- Additional thoughts re: cryptography
Owning bits—copyright
- Video
- Copyright info
- Proprietary formats
- DVD protection
- Privacy policies on the web
- Guest: intellectual property lawyer Marshall Lerner: free speech and DVD copy protection
- Books on the Internet
- Copyright, Mickey Mouse and derivative works
- Copyright: an introduction
- RIAA, MPAA concerns re: piracy
- Copyright and metaphor of theft
- Copyright: an overview, continued
- Copyright and derivative works
- Copyright: fair use
- Google Books search
- Guest: Charles Nesson, on copyright
Censorship and free speech
- Video
- Censorship of the Internet
- DVD protection
- Guest Chris Soghoian
- Guest: Professor Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard Law School, author of The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It
- Defamation
- The Communications Decency Act
- The Case of Ken Zeran
- Why the course is called Life, Liberty ...
- Content filtering
- Introduction: laws governing speech and the development of those laws
- Speech and liability on the Web: two cases compared
- Communications Decency Act and the Web
- CDA Section 230, the Good Samaritan clause
- CDA Section 230, continued
- The Good Samaritan provisions of the CDA ... John Perry Barlow’s Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, 1996
The role of government—laws and regulations
- Video
- DVD protection
- Guest Chris Soghoian
- Guest: Professor Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard Law School, author of The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It
- Why is it called the Internet?
- Comcast case and net neutrality
- Anatomy of an Internet packet; TCP and UDP
- Comcast and Bit Torrent protocol
- Network neutrality: an introduction
- How do you regulate the Internet?
- How do you make rules for technologies yet unseen?
- How do you regulate the Internet when the technologies keep evolving?
Radio and television
- Video
- Low level bits
- Error correction
- Hamming codes
- Shannon channel coding
- Representing analog information digitally
- Fourier transform
- Digitizing sound
- Electromagnetic spectrum
- Transmitting information at different frequencies
- What is modulation?
- Signals and noise
- Decibels
- Transmitting a signal
- Bandwidth
- Shannon and channel capacity
- How mobile phones started
Miscellaneous
- Video
- Introduction
- Probability
- Unlikely events
- Guest Chris Soghoian
- Modular arithmetic
- Modular arithmetic in cryptography
- Guest Latanya Sweeney: secret sharing
- Mark Rasch talks about computer crime
- Tyler Moore talks about phishing scams
- Concluding remarks
- Introduction: Bits reductionism: It’s all bits!
- Introduction: some history
- Why the course is called Life, Liberty ...
- Privacy versus national security, business interests
- Phishing attacks
- Tracking and monitoring: privacy versus convenience
- Bytes: quantities defined
- Net Neutrality: a historical context
- Dave Reed: Early Internet pioneer
- Social networks: Anomalies and pathologies, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
- The Lori Drew case: the verdict, and further thoughts
- Cooperation on the Web
- Cooperation on the Web: Wikipedia, part 1
- Collective intelligence: tracking digital trails
Enroll in Harvard Extension School courses
If you enjoyed this free class, the Harvard Extension School offers a wide variety of courses in numerous fields. Search for classes and enroll for credit during the fall and spring registration periods.
Harry Lewis has written numerous articles on computer science and the author of six books, including Excellence Without a Soul: Does Liberal Education Have a Future? and Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion, which he co-wrote with Hal Abelson and Ken Ledeen. He has taught for more than 30 years, has served as Dean of Harvard College from 1995 to 2003.
